


Machine Maker Music

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [12]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Humans are Aliens, Post-Canon, The human characters are just tiny NPCs, and Ghidorah being savvy to the ways of technologically advanced species, basically Ghidorah and humans side eyeing each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 07:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Now that Ghidorah has decided, for the moment, not to destroy planet Earth, there’s no reason they can’t explore it a little, right? And maybe go scavenging for spare parts in Boston. They’ve got a little mechanical project they’d like to do.





	Machine Maker Music

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 1.
> 
> This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots, although this one’s just Ghidorah alone and Rodan's barely glancingly referenced. This fic's set during [the fic published before it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026024), showing what Ghidorah was up to at the time. If you don’t wanna read the others fics in the series, all you need to know is Ghidorah’s hanging out on Isla de Mara right now.

The red sprite wasn't going to be back until night. They had the island to themselves.

There was, in fact, nothing even slightly appealing about the island when the red sprite wasn't on it. It was all plants and machine makers and the stink of dead things rotting. There was the constant sound of reconstruction to the south and boats back and forth to the mainland to the west.

Off the coast to the northeast was a ship longer than they were tall, which had a symbol on the side they were getting far too familiar with: the outlines of two triangles pointed toward each other, the tips touching. They weren't sure what kind of organization the twin triangles represented—in their interstellar experience, it could be a government, an army, a monster-monitoring program, or just the logo of a corporation that produced militarized vehicles—but whatever it was, they didn't like its ubiquity, and they didn't like how near it was to them and their red sprite. Not when the same symbol had been plastered on every wall of their Antarctic containment facility.

(That ship hadn't been there yesterday, had it? Did it show up because they'd knocked down one of the machine makers' aircraft? Did they not know a "leave us alone or else" when they saw one?)

So when Third suggested that they spend the day up north scavenging at their last battle site, and Second pointed out that, if they were really really going to give up on destroying this planet and make an effort to live on it instead, there was no longer any reason not to explore it, First caved quickly. All right. They'd see what they could find.

They should probably get off the island for a bit, anyway. After yesterday...

Second headbutted First to keep him focused. Right. They should go. Flying around yesterday had tired them out but done absolutely nothing to clear their heads like they'd been hoping for. Maybe what they really needed was a distraction.

###

Far below them, along a curved coastline, the machine makers' cities and vehicles glinted silver like the blade of a sickle. All that silver worried them.

When they'd last been awake, this planet hadn't _had_ machine makers. Just one species that looked to be stumbling that direction, setting up walls and wearing clothes and using tools—but they'd been ages away from lightning-powered tools. One quick dunk in the ice, though, and here it was: a full world-stretching civilization of machine makers. And they'd even extended _beyond_ this world, if yesterday they had indeed spotted more machines in orbit around the planet.

It made them so very nervous. So far, the machine makers couldn't _do_ anything to them besides sting their wings a bit... but if the machine makers decided they wanted to hurt them, it would only be a matter of time. They had to keep their defenses up.

They would have to maintain their red sprite's defenses, too. They had _heard_ the machine makers' artificial call that woke him up, they knew he hadn't been conscious for more than a few moments before they met him; so how long had he been asleep before that? Had he ever seen machine makers before? Did he understand what they were capable of? What they could do to him?  


Until he understood—until they _knew_ he understood—they'd just have to keep a watch out for both of them.

And they'd have to be very careful.

###

They'd hoped that the trashed city where they'd fought the little king would be deserted. No such luck. From above, in the parts of the city that hadn't been damaged, business seemed to be carrying on as usual. While the damaged sections didn't appear to have the same level of urban bustle as the rest of the city, they were filled with heavy vehicles industriously moving around rubble and workers who froze or ran as they swooped by above.

What, did they plan on cleaning up _all_ the damage? And then what, rebuilding over it? Absurd. They'd seen cultures that would simply burn down the remains of partially-destroyed neighborhoods in order to rebuild them afresh. It seemed to them that people could save a lot of time by doing that. It took a lot less work to burn something down and start over than it did to fix something broken.

The work in progress meant that it was difficult to find somewhere to land without risking stepping on the machine makers. While they'd be satisfyingly squishy (and Third really wanted to find out how one tasted when they weren't charred to cinders) they didn't know how much this particular race of machine makers valued individual members. They didn't know how many they could safely kill before the survivors decided to call in aircraft with missiles—or, worse, the little king. Even the gladiatorial stadium where they'd been planning to land—the one from where they'd heard that mechanical screaming that had broken their control over the beasts of this world—was occupied, the arena filled with triangular white fabric tents and blocky gray metal trailers. What an annoyance.

They circled over it once to make sure that the stands at least were clear, carefully landed in them, and immediately dropped onto their wings to spread out their weight. The semi-hollow structure was already partially crumbled, they'd have to be careful to keep the whole thing from collapsing under them. They looked down at the machine makers assembled in the arena below and were satisfied to see them fleeing in terror.

Then they turned their attention to the stands themselves. They'd chosen to land in this gladiatorial arena for a specific purpose, after all. Where were the music boxes?

(The proper term for them, they were sure, wasn't _actually_ "music boxes." But the machines they were looking for—the ones that had projected the artificial cry all the way across the planet—were more likely than not going to be box-shaped, and if they could produce any sound at all then they could _certainly_ produce music, and so they tended to ignore whatever the various machine-making aliens they encountered might actually call their noisy machines and thought of them as "music boxes" instead.)

They peered at the tall structures extending over the arena stands. There _had _been music boxes among them last time—they'd crunched down on some to try to stop the noise—but they seemed to have been all knocked down or removed. what was left was tall metal scaffolds covered at the top with grids of dozens of little metal cups; they'd seen music boxes structured like that in the past, but... no, those were lights, weren't they? They'd seen them the last time they were here, too. Second huffed a fork of lightning at the tall metal base supporting one; and sure enough, all the little cups illuminated, several popping from the sudden rush of power. So much for that. They peered under the stands, maybe some smaller music boxes had been attached down there...?

Ah. Yes, _that_ looked likely. Second tried for a smaller burst of power this time; it was still enough to make the box shrilly shriek static for a second, vibrating so fast it was a blur, before it popped. Smoke curled up from it. Yes, _that_ seemed like just the thing. They crept forward along the stands, looking for another one. How were they going to safely extract it to haul home...?

Something small but incredibly loud shrieked by overhead. They looked up to see several aircraft streak past—the sort that carried those missiles that stung like hell. Damn. They were there for _them_, weren't they? First raised his head, peeking over the top of the stands; there were a couple of comparatively large vehicles approaching the gladiatorial stadium from the streets outside. They hadn't seen the type before, but thought there was a _pretty good chance_ that the long hollow pipes extending out of the tops of them were designed to fire very large, very uncomfortable projectiles.

Ugh.

No. No, they were not going to start a fight. They were absolutely not. The more fights they started, the closer the machine makers got to deciding they needed to either kill them or run them off the planet, and that ran rather counter to their current "lounge on the red sprite's island watching him bathe in lava until they thought of something new to do with their life" plan. But they weren't keen on having the machine makers monitoring them with war machines while they tried to figure out how to salvage one of their music boxes. As long as the machine makers were waiting for them to open up hostilities, if they _sneezed_ it could turn this city into a war zone again.

So how did they show the pathetic little tool-users that they weren't going to eat them?

Tails rattling faintly in annoyance, they carefully picked their way down from the stands and out a gap smashed in the side of the arena to stand in front of the vehicles topped with the—whatever they were—blowpipes? With exaggerated flourishes, they bowed sardonically at the humans. See? That's the gesture used on this planet to say you're not going to fight, right? Now there's no trouble?

The vehicles with the pipes didn't move. Well. They'd have to assume the machine makers got it.

They straightened up and turned to resume to their work—but then stopped. It galled them that the machine makers might think they actually _feared_ the thought of fighting them. Although they had to make sure the machine makers knew they weren't going to fight them, by no means did they want to leave them with the impression that they _respected_ them.

They turned back to the large vehicles, leaned slowly and carefully toward the first, circling around it with their heads; scooped it up in their mouth from the side so that it couldn't aim its pipe down one of their throats; and, just as slowly and carefully, picked it up, turned it over, and gently set it back on the ground upside-down.

Then they returned to their work.

###

They managed to pry out two music boxes whole, wires dangling free and loose, and decided that was enough to experiment with. They carefully cradled them in one wing as they ventured out into the ruined neighborhood around the gladiatorial stadium, reluctantly sticking to a leisurely stroll to allow the machine makers time to get out of their path. They were looking for some other materials they'd need to get the boxes to actually work. Aluminum, mainly. And if they could find any graphite...

A shrill whistling sound came from somewhere around their feet. They looked down, expecting to see that they'd stepped on something noisy, but instead saw a cluster of machine makers together, waving wildly to get their attention. What? What in the world did they want? They eyed them warily to see if they had anything that looked like weapons, then lowered their heads, getting closer.

Once they had their attention, the machine makers stopped waving, and one in the middle stepped forward, pointed up at them, pointed at a building across the street, and then pantomimed an exaggerated punch toward the building.

They glanced at the building. It was heavily damaged, one wall half caved in.

They couldn't remember if this one was their fault or the little king's; were the machine makers scolding them for damaging it? Or maybe asking them to finish the job. That building wasn't very stable. It would be far easier to bring it down than to fix it up.

One of them looked down at the machine maker again; it repeated the punch gesture, and all the machine makers looked up at them expectantly. Well. Why not.

They raised a tail up, whipped it around, and slammed it into the building's damaged wall. One swing was all it took to make the building crumble in on itself and slowly collapse. The machine makers that had been waving scattered, sprinting down the street to dodge falling debris. Idiots.

They ultimately picked up a vehicle in a nice color that was surely far too crumbled for the machine makers to want it anymore, and took off, heading home with their prizes held carefully in their talons.

###

The air around this world was thick with radio waves. It hadn't been like this before they'd been frozen. They could feel the waves ghosting through their wings as they flew, collecting in their shoulder blades and collar bones. They could almost hear them.

The machine makers were sending _something_ back and forth—and quite enthusiastically. 

They didn't know what it was, but what they hoped was that it was music. It had been _so long_ since they'd heard any music that they hadn't made themselves. It didn't matter that this was a new planet, that any music they might find would sound like alien noise; if there _was_ music here, they'd learn how to make sense of it.

But, whatever sound the radio waves carried, they'd be hearing it soon enough. By no means were they themselves machine makers. But machine _copiers?_ Sure—one needn't be an advanced species to mimic one. And it was pretty easy, truth be told, to put together a machine that knew how to turn radio waves into sound, provided you already had a music box for it to play out of.

Fairly soon, they'd be able to hear what it was the machine makers were sending back and forth to each other. And if it wasn't music, perhaps it would be useful anyway.

###

When they got home, they spent the rest of the afternoon prying apart the vehicle for parts, carefully fishing into its frame with talons and tail spines and at one point even the tip of a wing to rip out the useless interior bits. As night fell, they reluctantly moved to the southern edge of the red sprite's territory, using one of the banks of lights that the machine makers had trained on the volcano as illumination to keep working.

They'd moved on from the vehicle and were trying to carefully pry off the music box's outer casing with the tips of their teeth when the red sprite came home. First looked up as he fluttered down, and their heart beat faster.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/186694344897/machine-maker-music). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)! Next fic up on _probably _Sunday, unless I make time for it sooner. (I'm posting this fic two days later than I meant to so I'm trying to catch up!)


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